ARTISTS FOR DEMOCRACY

Artists 4 Democracy was founded in 2017 in the spirit of radical practicality to bring together artists, art educators, and students to protect democracy by mobilizing the art community for political action and civic engagement. Through voter registration drives, artist talks, art sales, fundraisers, canvassing, and political events, we foster and protect our participatory democracy.

In 2018 we began our partnership with student bodies and witnessed firsthand how even small engagements brought big results. Partly due to our GOTV and registration efforts, the student voter turnout at CalArts increased by 43.8% compared to the prior midterm election and flipped two red districts blue. Despite the pandemic, 2020 saw A4D taking our efforts nationwide. We forged partnerships with art schools throughout the country with the goal of inspiring students to vote through a series of hugely popular online artist talks with internationally renowned artists such as Laura Owens, Christina Quarles, Lauren Halsey, Amir Fallah and Ruben Ochoa, we used our online platform to encourage student to engage civically and provided them with practical information about how, why and where to vote. Artists 4 Democracy has also built expansive and ongoing partnerships with grassroots organizations across the country, including ADVICE, Walk the Walk, Phone Banking with Artists and Swing Left.

As we approach the elections of 2024, we do so with a renewed sense of urgency. The push for anti-democratic legislation at the local and state level, paired with the roll back of personal freedom and privacy laws surrounding abortion, make it all the more imperative that we mobilize people, especially young people and first time voters to vote. We will be partnering with other organizations as well as universities and colleges in across CA and in Swing States to help bring information on the how’s, why’s and importance of voting to help get out the vote in this historically important election.

As a multilateral network, the art community is uniquely poised to instigate change. Artists have the potential to reach a broad section of people across the country, and share skills suited to providing a creative approach to the pressing issues of climate change, income and gender inequality, healthcare and criminal justice as well as voting rights. Artists 4 Democracy believes that by fostering this sense of empowerment in young artists they will use their creativity to become active forces for positive political and social change.

WE HAD A PHENOMENAL ARTIST TALK WITH KRISTINA WONG! WATCH IT HERE ON YOUTUBE.

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